


Ruthless Call Of Senseless Voices

by AuroraKant



Series: Winter Whumperland [7]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, But he gets a hug!, Comic Book Science, Crying, Dick Grayson Gets a Hug, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, I am so mean to Dick in this one, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Stalking, Therapy, Threats of Institutionalization, loss of reality, no beta we die like robins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:16:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraKant/pseuds/AuroraKant
Summary: His apartment was clean. Nobody had fiddled with any lock, the doors and windows perfectly intact, the security system running smoothly. His bloodwork had shown no diversions from the norm either, and after searching for two hours – Nightwing would have to wait today – all he found was a pair of socks he had searched for a week ago.No bugs. No trip wires. No hidden cameras.Or: Weird things start happening around Dick - he forgets things, finds others in weird places, startles because of shadows... but things have to get worse, before they can start getting better. And, oh, they get bad.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Series: Winter Whumperland [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053023
Comments: 44
Kudos: 205
Collections: Bat Family 18+ Discord Server January Prompt Event





	Ruthless Call Of Senseless Voices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aelig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelig/gifts).



> Hello Aelig!!!  
> This is super late - or right on time, depending how you look at it!  
> I really hope you are going to enjoy this one - it gets dark (but it also gets lighter)!
> 
> Prompts: Stalking + "I will always find you"

It started small. Stuff like this always started small.

It was his coffee cup Dick noticed first. When he got up in the morning, it was no longer standing where he remembered putting it the day before after he had finished doing the dishes.

It was nothing big, Dick shrugged, found his cup in the plate cupboard, and moved on with his life. He drank his coffee, sorted through some files on his laptop, and got ready for work.

He already wore his shoes, his jacket slung over his arm, when he grabbed his keys out of the key bowl. Or tried to – there were no keys to be found, his hand empty.

They weren’t in the pocket of his favorite jacket, and they weren’t in the key bowl next to the door. That was… _weird._ Dick always put them in the bowl, to make sure things like this didn’t happen. He would be late for work, should he have to search any longer.

In the end – twenty stressful minutes later – he found them in one of his boots standing next to the door. Maybe he had dropped them? But, no, that felt wrong as well.

The moment he returned from work, he would search his entire apartment. This was… unusual. Nothing horrible yet, but Dick knew he had to be cautious. He was a Bat after all – and a Bat didn’t believe in coincidences.

Maybe he’d been hit with some sort of gas or drug during last night’s patrol? Or maybe someone had broken in? His brothers liked to prank him. Yeah, that’s what it was. Probably. Hopefully.

Right now, Dick didn’t have the time to figure it out, he would be late as it was, but once he got back…. Not even the last corner of his apartment would be safe from Dick’s inquiring gaze. Maybe he would even put himself through a tox scan. Just to be sure.

He should also call his brothers.

If it was really them… Dick would make them pay. You didn’t just prank Nightwing and expect to get away with it.

His apartment was clean. Nobody had fiddled with any lock, the doors and windows perfectly intact, the security system running smoothly. His bloodwork had shown no diversions from the norm either, and after searching for two hours – Nightwing would have to wait today – all he found was a pair of socks he had searched for a week ago.

No bugs. No trip wires. No hidden cameras.

It was just his apartment, a bit chaotic now that Dick had destroyed half his organization system to search for something he couldn’t find. Maybe… maybe Dick had just placed his cup in the wrong shelf and his keys in a boot.

Weirder things have happened.

Alfred once searched for his glasses for three hours before finding them in the fridge. Stuff like that happened all the time.

Dick tried to ignore the traitorous voice in his mind that told him that Alfred was well in his sixties… Dick was twenty-five. Just as he tried to ignore the unease growing in his stomach, and the anxiety sending shivers down his spine.

This was alright. And perfectly normal.

Dick would get to the bottom of this – even if the solution was as simple as doing more memory exercises.

Life continued.

Dick misplaced more and more things.

It was getting infuriating. One evening he couldn’t find his escrima stick, no matter where he searched, only to open his cupboard hours later finding it exactly where he knew he had put it. It had been there the entire time… but Dick was sure he had checked his equipment closet at least three times during his frantic search. It made no sense!

The frustration was growing inside of him, and with it the number of sticky-notes covering his apartment grew as well.

It was a system for remembering things, since that seemed to be the main problem Dick was forced to deal with, and it worked – as long as Dick found the sticky-notes he had used to remind him of the placement of things.

And the problem was… Dick was afraid of telling anyone else about his little problem. It sounded insane whenever Dick tried to put it into words:

“I put my socks into the fridge three times last week and I cannot remember doing it even once.”

It was… a memory problem.

Dick was simply having a little memory problem. Sometimes things were as easy to explain as that. 

_Maybe it was something genetic_ , a voice whispered inside Dick’s head, and a shiver ran down his spine. No. It couldn’t be, could it? Dick had… no idea what his family’s medical history looked like. They had been circus folk for generations now. Dick’s parents didn’t even have insurance… when someone hurt themselves in the circus, all the performers crowd founded a doctor’s visit.

Heck, before Dick moved to Gotham – to Bruce – he had only seen a doctor once in his life, when he sprained his ankle during a performance and his parents wanted to make sure it wasn’t broken. Everything else got treated at home: ear infections, the flu, weird red spots on his nose.

There were no medical records.

_Oh God, there were no medical records._

What if he had something rare? Something nobody knew about because his family had always been living on the road, dying young when the times were hard?

Dick’s hands were shaking when he pulled on his hair, desperation heavy and sickly on his chest. It was hard to pull in a breath, panic chocking him. Fuck. No. It couldn’t be that… it had to be something else. But now that the thought had invaded his mind… Dick couldn’t shake it anymore.

He sat down at the kitchen table, desolate and forlorn, the sticky notes in front of him a sea of forgotten things. He scanned over them, his eyes searching for something. Dick had no idea what it was… the reminders felt like stones, weights in an invisible trial against him.

‘Keys are in the bowl. Keys are in the bowl.’

‘You but the butter tray in the fridge.’

‘Socks. You washed your socks.’

These notes didn’t really help him remember… but they forced him to act more consciously. After everything he did – he wrote a note. The table was barely visible underneath all that pink and yellow and blue and… purple? Dick could have sworn he had bought cyan colored sticky-notes.

He could have sworn! Cyan was his favorite color… he always bought something in that shade when he was forced to enter an office supply store. He always… he’d been so sure. He… A single tear ran down his cheek, and Dick…

Why was it the color of a note that hurt him like this? Why was it something so small that felt so big?

He couldn’t…

Dick went to bed early that day, his Nightwing suit laying forgotten in the equipment closet. He couldn’t face the possibility of making a mistake on patrol… right now, Dick Grayson was a danger to himself. Nightwing would be a danger to the entirety of Blüdhaven.

Steph was sitting in Dick’s kitchen when he returned from work a week later, her eyes scanning the mess that had once upon a time been his apartment.

There was a frown on her face. Dick understood it all too well. 

“Hi… Why are you here?”

“Because you told me to come?”

She looked at him, something inquiring in her gaze, and Dick wasn’t sure he measured up to whatever she was trying to see. Instead, he pulled his phone from the back pocket of his jeans and opened it. It was full of memos directed towards himself, and when he clicked on his contact list…

Yeah, the last text he’d sent had been directed at Steph. A short message, his texting style for sure:

“Wanna come over and patrol together?”

She had replied with a thumb’s up smiley.

And now she was here.

Dick must be a sight to behold, his confusion stark on his face, the phone forgotten in his hands. Before he could say something, Steph stood up, her entire posture changing. She was no longer funny Steph, or even Batgirl… she was Stephanie Brown, nursing student in her third year:

“Dick? Is everything alright?”

It barely sounded like a question. Dick felt like an idiot, when he stammered:

“I- I think, I’m losing my mind.”

She forced him to talk after his confession, her eyes frighteningly sharp. It was easy to forget how clever and quick Stephanie could be, her usual joy covering up her more serious side. Not right now. Right now, Steph was 100% business, and Dick was just the patient being dragged along.

He tried to answer every question she asked – her frown deepening and easing depending on his answer.

It felt good to finally talk to someone about it, his mind feeling more and more like a shive each day, but that didn’t ease the panic in his stomach. What if she had an answer? What if it was bad? What if… what if Dick was just sitting here, patiently waiting to be told horrible news?

The moment she’d say it, Dick would be forced to live in a reality in which it was true.

At the end of it all, three cups of coffee later, Steph looked at him and said:

“I- I don’t know any illness like that. At least not a common genetic one… you might, however, be experiencing something like a… a mental breakdown? Look, Dick, I’m not a doctor, fuck, I am barely even a nurse… but please get that checked out, yeah? And until you do that – no more patrolling. If I hear about another Nightwing sighting, I’ll tell Bruce about it and he _will_ force you to stay inside until your head makes sense again.”

It was a death sentence and absolution at once.

No more Nightwing. Dick could do that. As long as… as long as Bruce didn’t find out, Dick could deal with this. So… a mental breakdown, huh? That didn’t feel too far off. At some point even the most resilient vigilante would have to break – would have to face the decades of trauma.

It made sense. But…

“What now?”

“Now you try to catch up on sleep, because you look dead on your feet. And then you eat something, call a few friends, and try to figure it out – there is no shame in needing a break, Dick. You can do it. Just… try to reach out to someone. A professional, maybe. I know you Bats are all terrible when it comes to therapy, but it might actually help.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Dick hugged Steph tight when she left, his chest heavy with a sense of foreboding. Something wasn’t right – but the paranoia nesting in his chest, might just be another symptom of this supposed breakdown. Dick would… he would figure it out.

Soon after his talk with Steph the nightmares started.

His sleep was filled with bodyless voices, telling him that he was theirs, that he belonged to them. They wanted to eat him, Dick was sure… or maybe they just wanted to devour his soul. It was hard to care – the terror running through his veins so complete, so horrible, there was little he could do.

He barely slept anymore. It was hard to, when all he could hear as soon as he closed his eyes, was a voice whispering “ _I will always find you_ ”. And it did – in every dream Dick had, even if it didn’t start as a nightmare, the voice _would_ find him. And he would wake up screaming.

His erecting sleep schedule drained away the last of his mental reserves. It was hard to get out of bed in the morning, and it was even harder to face the day. His apartment turned into more and more of a mess, and the sticky-notes covered every surface of his kitchen – even if Dick barely believed in their usefulness anymore.

After two weeks of little to no sleep – and his day job telling him to fuck off – Dick managed to contact a therapist. Just… a therapist. It wasn’t the Bat way, but Dick was too tired to search through file after file in order to find the best possible match. He didn’t need the perfect therapist – he just needed someone to tell him he wasn’t going insane.

His hands were shaking.

Dick was sitting in Dr. Pashna’s office and his hands were shaking. And sweating. He was nervous and frightened – besides the child psychologist Bruce had forced him to see after his parents’ death, Dick had never talked to a therapist.

What was the protocol for this? What was Dick supposed to do?

He couldn’t trust himself anymore. He had spent an hour in front of the mirror, just making sure he hadn’t forgotten to get dressed. Halfway out of his apartment building, Dick had noticed that he’d forgotten his shoes.

He had to go back, get his shoes and go through the same spiel of remembering things again. This time he made sure to look at his feet as well. And yet… the experience had shaken him. Leaving his home was growing harder and harder, dodging Bruce’s calls and texts as well.

Dick just… he needed a clue regarding his situation before he could tell Bruce. Whatever Dick was about to learn, he needed to know before he put the weight of it on his guardian’s shoulders,

The office itself was bright and friendly, Dr. Pashna smiling at him, even if he failed to return her greeting.

God, why was Dick so nervous?

Because his life was falling apart – it was actually rather obvious.

Dick cleared his throat and began to talk. Dr. Pashna listened. And at the end of the session, she smiled and said:

“I am not sure I can help you, Mr. Grayson. This seems to be something that needs to be treated at an in-patient clinic. It could be neurological… or you could be in the middle of an episode of an as of yet undiagnosed psychosis. I do not want to judge after just one session, but I am not sure I am the person you need. I can give you the number of a colleague of mine – he might be able to help you secure a place in a clinic. And until then? Try keeping a journal. That might be a bit more organized than your sticky-note system.”

Her words washed over him.

_Fuck._

His life was really falling apart, wasn’t it?

Now it was no longer just about talking to a therapist… now it was thinking about going to a psych ward. The thought of Arkham left a bitter taste on the back of his mouth, his panic growing stronger. Yes, the logical part of his brain knew, that most psych wards were legit and helped their patients… but Dick couldn’t shake the panic at the image of Arkham in his head.

The screaming. The neglect. The lack of agency.

Dick hated being locked in. He liked to be free, to not be stuck in a cage. It wasn't even a preference. It was a fact. He couldn't imagine how it would help his mental state if he just let others do the exact opposite of that to him. If he let them lock him away. He couldn’t… he wouldn’t…

The therapist was still talking, a sad smile full of pity on her pretty face, when she said:

“Thank you so much for trusting me with this, Mr. Grayson. I know it wasn’t easy… and please take good care of yourself.”

If Dick mumbled a goodbye as he left her office behind, he couldn’t remember. But then again… Dick could no longer trust anything he did.

He was sitting on the bathroom floor, the light above the sink the only one turned on in the entire apartment. It was dark outside. Dick had lost… he had lost an entire day.

There were twenty missed calls from Bruce. The bastard had probably noticed that something was wrong, when Dick’s insurance company contacted him because of the therapist’s visit. It wouldn’t be long before Batman would stand in the middle of Dick’s bedroom now.

Dick wasn’t sure if he was happy or afraid by the prospect of Bruce finding him like this.

He had written his journal.

He knew he had.

It had been full of his neat handwriting; the shorthand Dick had learned from Bruce himself. Pages after pages full of reminders, and notes, and thoughts. He wrote down his dreams, the nightmares haunting him… one page had just been the sentence “ _I will always find you_ ” over and over and over…

Now it laid on the floor next to him, its pages blank.

Dick knew, knew, knew that he had written in said book. He knew that he had done the memory exercises he had found online, and he knew that the journal had been full.

He knew…

The pages were blank.

Dick wanted to cry. No, scratch that, he was crying, ugly sobs wrecking his thinning frame. It was hard to eat well, when his fridge was empty, a deep, deep fear of leaving the house settling in Dick’s bones whenever he thought about it.

He couldn’t… what if he got worse in the middle of the supermarket? What if…?

Dick couldn’t trust himself, the empty pages taunting him.

He hadn’t been Nightwing in over a month now. His day job had fired him three weeks ago. His therapist visit had been… eight days ago.

It was high time Bruce showed up and explained to Dick what was going on.

Maybe… maybe it was a toxin? And Dick had simply messed up the scan for it?

Maybe it was his own fault that he couldn’t seem to focus, and that fear had permanently moved into his heart. Maybe it was his own fault that everything hurt, worst of all his head.

Sometimes he found scratches he couldn’t remember getting, and sometimes his hands were bloody, even though Dick couldn’t recall reaching for a knife.

It was getting out of hand…

It was…

Dick would have to call the doctor, Dr. Pashna had told him about. He would have to go to an in-patient clinic. Everything else would be irresponsible – he owed it to himself and he owed it to his family. They needed him… and that included him getting better. He couldn’t help them like this – had not taken even a single call from any of them for weeks.

The guilt was just another parasite trying to eat him alive.

It would be okay…

Dick just needed to call… he just had to find the number again, dial it, and let someone else take the reigns from his hands. As much as Dick loved his agency, his independence… he loved feeling alive more. He wanted to be able to trust himself again… he needed-

His fingers fumbled over the cold tiles, his hands searching for his phone. He had held it only moments ago, waiting for a call from Bruce… maybe he would have answered that one. But, no… something was wrong.

He couldn’t find his phone.

Dick looked and looked and looked, even crawling through his bathroom on his knees, but no matter what he did… his phone stayed lost.

Fuck.

 _No_.

He had almost… he had… he was ready to call that fucking doctor! He was ready to give up! He just-!

A scream full of frustration tore itself from his throat, his hand hitting the mirror with all of Nightwing’s strength behind it. Only… his hand never touched the glass. It stopped a centimeter before it would have connected, sending splitters of glass everywhere.

The… the mirror was whole.

That made no sense. No sense at all.

Dick stared at his reflection, at the confusion and pain in his eyes. He looked horrible. When did Dick last look at himself like this? His cheeks were gaunt, and his eyes big and scared. His hair was unwashed and… he had a beard. His hand touched his face, slowly running over the stubble. Dick… he never grew a beard, mostly because it would be too recognizable as Nightwing…

Not that he was Nightwing right now.

It was… he could feel the beard. It was there.

Long and unkempt. The hairs caught in Dick’s nailbeds, ripping on his tender skin. He never grew a beard… he looked too much like his dad like that. He looked foreign and yet known at the same time.

It was…

One moment later it was gone.

The stubble disappeared from under his fingertips, his reflection was once again clean shaven. A sob escaped Dick, a truly broken sound. It didn’t make sense… it made no sense at all! It was… Dick was…

Fuck, he was losing it. Big time.

Dick couldn’t remember ever feeling this scared.

Batman didn’t come to save him that night – and he didn’t come the following day either.

Dick was laying in his bed, forced awake by yet another nightmare.

The darkness was staring at him. It had eyes. It saw him. Why… Why couldn’t Dick look away? He was frozen in his bed, invisible restrains keeping him in place. He couldn’t… he was so scared. He was so scared and helpless and small.

Tears were running down his face, his body too exhausted to truly sob. Instead, he was silent as he grieved his mind, silent, as he grieved his sorry state of mind.

It smelled bad, Dick not sure when he had last cleaned his apartment. There was an air of misery surrounding him, making it hard to focus on things like hygiene… and why did it matter at all? Dick was just, he was just wasting away.

It was okay.

Dick could…

He stared at the eyes looking at him. Their gazes were interlocked, and Dick knew, nobody was sitting in his closet, but his heart beat fast, his breath coming in short bursts. He was scared of something he knew wasn’t real.

Not that it mattered anymore, reality just a far away concept.

 _I will always find you,_ said the voice in his head.

Voice in his head.

In his head.

Voice in his head.

_Fuck._

“Who are you?”, whispered Dick. And suddenly he was sure, that there was someone else in this room with him. Just not… just not physically. Whoever it was… they were in his head. They had invaded his mind.

 _Your biggest fan. Your worst nightmare_.

The voice answered him. Dick wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Maybe he had lost it completely, the hallucinations growing worse… or he had cracked the code. There was a voice in his head, and Dick could only hear it whisper – and when he panicked, thinking worse and worse things, that whisper got louder as well.

“What… what are you?”

Dick didn’t move. He laid silent, his eyes never leaving the hallucination on the other side of the room. His bones were tired, his body exhausted – and his mind? Maybe it was simply broken. For a moment Dick feared that the voice would stay silent, that Dick would be left blabbering to himself in his room, all alone, just the monster watching him as company, but after a few seconds the voice echoed through his head again:

 _I am a man like you, Nightwing. As I said – I am your biggest fan_.

“What did you do to me?”

_Nanobots. It was surprisingly easy. Your body was already infested with them, when I injected you with my own… that’s probably also the reason you couldn’t find me – your own body betrayed you by hiding my presence._

A shiver ran down Dick’s spine, making him swallow. _Oh_. It made a horrible kind of sense, these words the voice was uttering. Dick had never really gotten rid of all the Spyral tech. His body was infested with nanotech – and he was used to finding it in his bloodwork.

It had truly been his own body that betrayed him. His own foolishness.

“What… what is your plan? Because… you won. I have fallen… hard and far…”

The room in front of him flickered, suddenly it was day, light filtering in through the window, the shadow near his closet gone. His room looked clean and welcoming… Dick blinked, and he was back in his dark room, bathed in misery and depression.

“What-?”

_Yes, I was trying to make you lose your… role as a hero. But that doesn’t mean I am done. If I let you go now, what would I have achieved? In a few weeks you’d be back on your feet. No, I want you to be mine. I want to see you broken, molded after my image. I want your mind to belong to me – only me._

Dick squeezed his eyes shut, as the image in front of him flickered again. Lights were dancing through his field of vision, and he wanted it to stop. He needed it to stop! His arm hit something as he turned around, desperate to get away from whatever the voice was trying to show him.

His eyes blinked open, and for a horrible moment Dick thought he had hit Tim. But, no, he was alone. It was a mirage that had appeared in front of him. Another hallucination – only this one had felt so real.

“No… what are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?”

_Your senses… they belong to me now. You can trust nothing you experienced in the past three months. Did you even really go see a therapist? Was Stephanie truly here to see you? Did Bruce call at all? Your reality, Nightwing, belongs to me. And at this point? The world is ready to believe that as well. It just needs another push or two._

“What do you mean?”

But Dick had the horrible feeling he already knew just what the voice meant. He… he wasn’t sure what the voice had said was true, but his life had been utterly disrupted by whatever was happening to his mind. He had lost his job, he had stopped going out as Nightwing, he had told Steph about his problems… he had seen a therapist who told him to see a psychiatrist.

No matter what he did now… everyone would believe he was crazy.

Should he tell someone about the nanobots running rampant in his brain, they would simply assume he completely lost it. He would have to prove it himself – but Dick had the vague feeling the voice wouldn’t let him.

_Your public image is crumbling. Your social contacts? You haven’t talked to anyone in months. You are alone with no net to catch you – but you have me. And I can make you see and feel and do everything I want you to do._

“How? How… the things I forgot… the- the keys in my shoes or the journal entries? What did…?”

After a moment of silence, Dick blinked only to find himself in the middle of a memory. He was writing in the journal, words appearing on the page as Dick thought of them… and then a second image laid itself over the memory Dick had thought to be the real one: It was the same journal, the same hand, the same pen… only that Dick never touched the paper with the tip of said pen.

The journal was empty.

Because Dick had never written a word in it.

The voice showed him more memories like the one he just saw. He saw himself pick the purple sticky-notes, the paper appearing cyan in his mind’s eye. He saw himself ball up his socks and put them in his shoes… only to realize it had been his key be put in there.

A sob tore itself from his throat, senseless wailing filling the room. No. Nonononono… This couldn’t be- This couldn’t be true. Dick was… he couldn’t…

What was real at all?

Was the voice real…? Did it even matter?

Ugly tears ran down his cheeks, snot clogging up his nose. It was- He felt so- He had to do something! He had to tell someone… even if they didn’t believe him… they would do something. They would save Dick from himself.

He rolled out of bed, ready to search for his phone, when the walls turned to stone, his door falling closed with a bang. No. Just a hallucination. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t- Dick stumbled forward, his hands touching rough wood.

Closed. The door was closed.

Dick tried to open the door, tried to pry it open… but even with his entire weight pushing against the illusion keeping it closed, Dick made no difference.

“What? Your plan is to keep me locked in my room? That’s it? Wow! So evil! So ingenious!”

He was mad. Frightened. Hurt.

Maybe he was losing it for real.

Maybe it did no longer matter if he was insane or not – the results were the same.

_No. I just want you to understand, Nightwing: Your reality belongs to me. Your senses belong to me. In a way… you belong to me. And since I am in your body… I don’t care what you do or where you are. I just need you to accept your new life. That is all._

“You bastard! You fucking bastard!”

Dick kicked the door, only for his foot to meet air, his entire balance shifting as he tripped. He fell onto the ground, staring at the carpet. His carpet. The walls were no longer stone, the door no longer closed.

Dick didn’t stand back up – instead, he curled into a ball and cried.

Dick tried to ignore the spiders crawling up his legs. The knowledge that they weren’t real barely helped – in a way it made it worse, confused his brain even more.

And yet… it was better to feel utterly unsettled than deeply scared.

Hah, small blessings in life.

His hands were shaking, Dick wasn’t sure when he last ate. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to eat. It was hard to tell what he wanted anymore – mostly he wanted things to stop.

Bruce had tried to call him (Dick had finally found his phone again!), but Dick hadn’t dared to answer the call. What if it was a fluke? Just another hallucination? What if… what if it wasn’t Bruce on the other side but the doctor? She had his number. She could call him.

What if she knew how bad it was?

Paranoia was a trait all Bats shared, but Dick had the vague feeling that his current situation had only made it worse. Just a hunch, really.

Dick forced another breath into his lungs, ignoring the disgusting sensation up his legs. It was… he wanted to scratch himself bloody – but he wouldn’t move his hands. He wouldn’t scratch. Wouldn’t bite. He wouldn’t betray his own body, like his mind had betrayed him.

The voice was silent most days, happy to inflict torture on Dick without telling him exactly what kind of hell he had to expect. It was lonely in his head, without the voice – Dick hadn’t allowed himself to answer when Steph knocked on his door. Or Tim. Or Damian.

Bruce hadn’t visited him yet.

(at least not as far as Dick could recall – then again… he wouldn’t trust himself. Not right now)

Dick continued to fiddle with his pants, ignoring the smell of something burning. Maybe he had cooked and forgotten the food on the stove – or it was just another hallucination, another way to torture him. The smell intensified and… Dick scrambled up from the floor.

Better safe than sorry.

The kitchen was empty, but just to make sure, Dick ran his fingers over the stove, touching each stovetop with his hands. They were turned off. The smoke was just in his head. _Just in his head_.

How was he even still alive? He barely slept; he barely ate… he couldn’t remember when he last left the apartment. It was a mess. He was a mess.

“What is your plan? Like this… I’m only going to die of malnutrition.”

_You are right, of course. But sooner rather than later someone will break down that door – and they will see your sorry state. Once you are diagnosed as clinically insane, we can have some uninterrupted fun._

“There have to be… faster options than that. More concrete ways of fucking me over… this is insane. And yes! I know!”

_Let’s just say… I have a plan. Nothing you have to worry about, of course… and maybe you should focus on your hands: They are burning._

Dick spent the next thirty minutes trying to keep his hands from turning into ashes – it was only after he saw the flames destroying his hands even after he had dunked them in ice cold water, that his brain caught up.

The pain felt so real, the flames so realistic… Dick cried himself to sleep.

Someone stood in his apartment.

Dick was… not sure. It could be a hallucination. The more he thought about it… yeah, it was probably a mirage. Just another shadow sent to haunt him… Dick tried his best to step out of its path on his way to the kitchen. But, before he could pass the giant shadow, a hand grabbed him by the arm.

Dick turned around, looking at the figure standing in his living room and…

“Batman?”

“Dick. Thank god… nobody heard from you. Your trackers are all malfunctioning. The motion sensors on your apartment building said nobody was here. I… Dick? What’s wrong?”

Huh.

Dick had seen Batman a few times by now, but never had the man spoken as much as he did just now. Most of the hallucinations were silent.

Batman was always silent.

“You usually don’t talk this much.”

“Dick… Can you look at me?”

Dick raised his eyes, and he knew he looked like shit. But even then… his mirages usually already knew that. They came out of his head, after all. But Batman surprised him… by turning into Bruce, the cowl pulled down, worry starkly written on his face:

“Oh my… Dick. What is going on here.”

Dick tried to tell the truth, but his mouth garbled his words, the voice making it hard to articulate himself:

“Hi Bruce… I… I am…”

The voice had never kept Dick from saying what he wanted to say before. Usually, Dick was free to explain his hallucinations that they were just that, something gleeful in the voice’s demeanor every time Dick slowly lost his hope again.

This time it was different.

This time the voice was making it hard to say what he needed to say.

Interesting.

“What? Your…” Dick watched as Bruce turned around, taking in the apartment, the smell… Dick’s sorry state. The worry was back – had never really left Bruce – as the man turned back towards Dick, a gauntleted hand touching Dick’s cheek.

Dick leaned into the touch. God, he had missed Bruce so much. Dick had missed his entire family – was still missing them.

“Dick… please tell me what happened. This isn’t normal… your apartment. Your job called… you just stopped showing up on day. You haven’t paid rent… I am- I am worried.”

“I think, I am going insane.”

This time his mouth formed the words, and Dick watched as Bruce recoiled. Something complicated happened on Batman’s face following that, an expression so detailed, Dick didn’t have the presence of mind to decipher it.

Bruce’s words, however, surprised him, when the man spoke:

“Okay. Okay, thank you for telling me. We are going to figure this out. Just… give me a moment. We’re… We’re going to figure this out. Let me… Pack a bag. Or I’ll pack you a bag. And then we’ll drive back to the Manor, yeah? And you can tell me what’s going on.”

“Why are you here Bruce? Are you even here?”

“I am… I am here.” And suddenly Dick was being hugged. Two strong, tree trunk thick arms pressed him against Batman’s chest plate, hot air ghosting over his unwashed hair. Bruce didn’t let go, even as Dick melted into the embrace, even as Dick started crying. Instead, he talked:

“As I said… your apartment sensors don’t work… you didn’t answer my calls… your boss contacted us, and so did your landlord. The… the insurance company called because of a visit to the therapist’s office. I was worried… and then I talked to Stephanie. She seemed concerned. She said you were taking a mental health break… I thought you had gone undercover. I- I wanted to see if I could find any clues in here… instead, I found you.”

Dick cried harder.

Maybe Bruce was real.

God, Dick needed Bruce to be real. He needed, needed, needed him to be real. Dick was desperate for his dad… for another hug like the one he was currently melting in.

“And thank god, I found you. It will be alright, Dick. I am sure… we will figure it out. I promise.”

The voice was unhappy at the back of his mind, Dick noticed. It was unhappy because Bruce didn’t act like he was supposed to act… maybe this was Dick’s chance. And if he failed? It wasn’t as if Dick’s situation could get any worse.

“Bruce… it’s nanotech. There is… the nanobots are… in my head. Bruce… please… help… please…”

A blinding headache pressed down on Dick as he pushed the words out. Monsters were attacking him, eating him alive. Bruce turned into a giant Bat, its clawed hands reaching for Dick – reaching for his heart. He screamed and fought and---

Pain.

He was… in pain.

It was all-consuming, fierce, and as the darkness finally claimed him, Dick could hear a scream. It sounded like Bruce. The voice was screaming as well, but while Dick had no idea what Bruce was still doing in this constructed nightmare replacing his reality, the voice’s words were clear as day:

**I will always find you.**

Dick woke up and it was silent.

His head was silent – and his surroundings were quiet as well. Step for step, sense for sense, Dick catalogued his body.

It was silent, but in the distance, Dick could hear the rustling of wings and the shuffling of busy feet on the Cave floor. He could smell antiseptic and machine oil… and he could feel the soft bed he was laying on. There was an IV in his arm, and a hand in his.

Dick blinked his eyes open. He felt already exhausted.

Bruce was sitting by his bed, worry lining his face. Dick wanted to believe it was real… but he dared not to hope. If there was one thing he knew, it was that he couldn’t trust his senses.

His… Bruce noticed that Dick had woken up, a relieved smile dancing over these usually so stoic lips:

“You’re awake.”

Dick nodded. He didn’t trust his voice. What if _the voice_ tried to control him again? What if the voice made him do something embarrassing?

“You had me worried there for a bit, chum.”

“Huh?”

“I- You probably don’t remember.”

Ice encased Dick’s chest. He was so sick of not remembering things. He was so sick of not trusting his own mind. His vow of silence broke, his desperation too great:

“What happened?”

“You… I was… I found you in your apartment, Dick. Everything was… completely run down. We talked. You- You told me you had problems and then… after… after you told me about the nanotech you started screaming. It was… horrible. I was so worried. You didn’t…”

Bruce looked away, his eyes not meeting Dick’s. No. Something horrible must have happened. Maybe it was better if this was a hallucination as well? Dick didn’t want to know what had happened next. He didn’t…

“What?”

“You didn’t recognize me. You fought me – I had to… I had to subdue you. I am so, so sorry, Dick. I just… I couldn’t simply watch as you hurt yourself.”

“Oh…”

This was not nearly as bad as Dick had feared. Maybe the voice was nice to him today… Exhaustion washed over him, and he closed his eyes. But before he could drift off, Bruce caught his attention again, tightening his grip of Dick’s hand:

“You were right. Nanobots. In your blood. And your brain… I am… we disabled them, but Alfred wasn’t sure you’d wake up again. It was quite the shock for your system… I am… so, so sorry, Dick.”

“For what?”

“For not noticing earlier. For leaving you alone even though I knew something was wrong. For… for subduing you and for endangering your heath…”

If Bruce was saying was true… Dick was free.

It felt unreal – Dick didn’t feel free.

But if Bruce… if Bruce…

“Can you proof it?”

“What?

“Can you proof that this is real? That I am real? That… that you are real?”

“I… what do I have to do to proof it to you?”

“I don’t know.”

Dick was just so tired. He only noticed he was crying, when Bruce’s hand wiped his tears away, something so soft and loving in the older man’s gaze, Dick could feel his heart break. If this was a hallucination, Dick would never recover from it.

It was too soft.

It was everything Dick wanted.

“We have time to figure it out…”

“What do you mean?”

“You… it’s going to take some time until you’re back on your feet, chum. And… and we’ll figure it out. I will… I will make sure you can believe in me. And in Alfred. Tim. Cass. Steph… Damian. It- It might not work in the beginning or… or you won’t always believe us… but we have time. It will get better.”

Dick was crying even harder now, his thin shoulder’s shaking in the gown he was wearing. He wanted to hope so badly, he wanted to believe in Bruce with his entire heart…

He just wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to lose said hope again.

“I love you, chum. I love you so, so much… if nothing else, please trust me when it comes to that…”

He clung to Bruce, pulling the man closer, melting into the familiar embrace. His heart was beating, thrumming with hope. Dick just… he needed this to be real. This had to be reality.

The Batman haunting him had never talked this much, had never turned into Bruce… maybe that would be enough. Maybe that would protect Dick’s heart long enough, for it to heal.

Bruce kept on holding him, even as Dick cried himself to exhaustion.

Bruce kept on holding him, even as Dick drifted off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, Bookmarks and Kudos make me reeeeeeeeally happy!! <3<3


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